1. Acoustic telemetry is a popular tool for long‐term tracking of aquatic animals to describe and quantify patterns of movement, space use, and diverse ecological interactions. Acoustic receivers are imperfect sampling instruments, and their detection range (DR; the area surrounding the receiver in which tag transmissions can be detected) often varies dramatically over space and time due to dynamic environmental conditions. Therefore, it is prudent to quantify and account for variation in DR to prevent telemetry system performance from confounding the understanding of real patterns in animal space use. However, acoustic receiver DR consists of a complex, dynamic, three‐dimensional area that is challenging to quantify.
2. Although quantifying the absolute DR of all receivers is infeasible in the context of most acoustic telemetry studies, we outline a practical approach to quantify relative variation among receiver DR over space and time. This approach involves selecting a set of sentinel receivers to monitor drivers of variation in detection range. Each sentinel receiver is subject to a range testing procedure to estimate detection efficiency (DE; the proportion of total transmissions detected by the receiver), at a range of distances from the receiver, to derive the maximum range (MR; distance from the receiver where DE is 5%) and Midpoint (distance from the receiver where DE is 50%). A reference transmitter is then placed at the Midpoint, providing a standardized measure of long‐term variation in DE, with each station having similar freedom of variance. Variation in reference tag DE is then combined with MR to calculate a DR correction factor (DRc). A modelling approach is then used to estimate DRc for all receivers in the array at spatial and temporal scales of ecological interest, which can be used to correct animal detection data in various ways.
3. We demonstrate this method with a hypothetical dataset, as well as empirical data from an acoustic telemetry array to delineate spatio‐temporal patterns of fish habitat use.
4. This is a flexible and practical approach to account for variation in acoustic receiver performance, allowing more accurate spatial and temporal patterns in aquatic animal spatial ecology to be revealed.

中文翻译：

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解决声学遥测阵列中检测范围变化以准确量化水生动物空间生态的实用方法

1. 声学遥测是一种长期跟踪水生动物以描述和量化运动，空间利用和各种生态相互作用模式的流行工具。声接收器是不完善的采样工具，由于动态环境条件，声接收器的检测范围（DR；在接收器周围可以检测到标签传输的区域）通常会在空间和时间上发生巨大变化。因此，谨慎地量化和说明DR的变化，以防止遥测系统的性能混淆对动物空间使用中真实模式的理解。但是，声学接收器DR由复杂，动态的三维区域组成，难以量化。
2. 尽管在大多数声学遥测研究的背景下量化所有接收器的绝对DR是不可行的，但我们概述了一种量化接收器DR在空间和时间上的相对变化的实用方法。此方法涉及选择一组哨兵接收器以监视检测范围变化的驱动程序。每个前哨接收机都要经过范围测试程序，以在距接收机一定距离的范围内估计检测效率（DE；接收机所检测到的总传输的比例），以得出最大范围（MR；距接收机的距离，其中DE是5％）和中点（到接收器的距离，DE是50％）。然后将参考发射机放置在中点处，以提供DE长期变化的标准化度量，每个站点具有相似的方差自由度。然后，将参考标签DE中的变化与MR相结合，以计算出DR校正因子（DRc）。然后，采用一种建模方法来估计阵列中所有接收者在生态感兴趣的时空尺度上的DRc，这可以用于以各种方式校正动物检测数据。
3. 我们用一个假设的数据集以及来自声学遥测阵列的经验数据来证明这种方法，以描绘鱼类栖息地使用的时空格局。
4. 这是解决声音接收器性能变化的灵活实用方法，可以揭示水生动物空间生态学中更准确的时空格局。